Knight Ridder Wire Service When the U.S. Olympic team entered the stadium at the Games’ opening ceremonies here, there was polite applause. When the Iraqis emerged, there was foot-stomping and cheering, and a few standing ovations. When the U.S. basketball team played its first game, against Puerto Rico las month, there was little doubt whom the crowd wanted to win- and it wasn’t the Dream Team. And when two top Greek runners were involved in a doping scandal, while Greeks did not excuse their behavior, some were sure that larger (i.e. American) forces were behind it. Paranoia? Sympathy for the underdog? Or just plain anti-Americanism? It’s a tricky question in this country of 11 million at the crossroads of East and West, whose recent history has been irrevocably shaped by U.S. involvement in its affairs. For many Greeks, the turbulence of the last half-century- a civil war and a U.S.-backed military dictatorship that lasted into the mid-1970s- fueled deep resentment and a sense of betrayal by a country once regarded as a benevolent protector. Though anti-U.S. sentiment today is no longer virulent, there is still visceral mistrust when it comes to the United States and its policies, historians and political scientists say. Add the United States’ status as the world’s sole superpower- and the natural tendency to question omnipotence- and you get an America ripe for targeting, said foreign policy analyst Ekavi Athanassopoulou. “To say simply that there is anti-Americanism in Greece is misleading,” Athanassopoulou said. “What exists here is strong and healthy criticism of U.S. policies. And while that criticism is not always rational or balanced, it is not leveled at Americans as a whole. You have to separate how Greeks feel about American policies from how they feel about what average Americans do or how they live.” Eugenios Dolias, 53, who owns a small Athens electronics shop, put it this way: “When an American is right and proper, then it is fine. Like that swimmer, Michael Phelps- we admire Americans like that. “But when they come in and think they can do whatever they want, and to hell with everyone else, I have a real problem with that. That’s not fair.” His feelings, Dolias says, are rooted in bitter memories. He and his wife, Zoe, vividly recall the misfortunes that befell Greece after 1944, as it emerged from four years of Nazi occupation. Ravaged by World War II, it then was torn apart by a civil war between communist and pro-Western factions.Through the 1947 Truman Doctrine, aimed at stunting Soviet expansion, Washington sent massive military and economic aid to Greece’s anticommunist forces, which tipped the scales in their favor and kept the country out of the Soviet bloc. The losers carry a grudge to this day, said Loukas Tsoukalis, professor of European integration at the University of Athens: “Don’t forget that for years, Greek political culture had its gravity left of center, and that is traditionally where you find the most criticism of the U.S.” Beyond that, he said, emotions still run high over the U.S. role in dealing with – if not supporting – the military dictatorship in power from 1967 to 1974. Led by a cabal of right-wing colonels, it is held responsible for triggering the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. In July of that year, the colonels staged a coup against the island’s elected leader, Archbishop Makarios. Turkey responded by sending troops to protect the Turkish-Cypriot minority community there.Greece’s complaint, Tsoukalis said, is that the United States did not discourage the coup _ or the Turkish invasion, which has placed Cypriot north under Turkish control ever since.”This has left traces of anti-Americanism in Greek society. But these are 30-year-old events now, so I think that, gradually, this disaffection will disappear,” Tsoukalis said, adding that President Clinton helped when he said, during a 1999 visit, that the United States failed Greece by putting its own interests before its obligation to democracy.Spiros Panagiotopoulos, 78, agrees. “All that old, sad stuff is over,” the Athens lottery store owner said. “I think time has healed those wounds. Greece today is very different than the Greece of that time.” But graffiti tell another story. The work of left-wing and anarchist groups, they denounce globalization and U.S. imperialism. “Killers of nations, go home” is a frequent slogan. Some of those slogans were heard in the 1990s, at demonstrations against U.S. policies in the Balkans, as well as more recent ones condemning the Bush administration’s go-it-alone approach to the war in Iraq. But on those fronts, Tsoukalis argues that Greece is not much different from other European countries that have criticized U.S. Mideast and Iraq policies. Bill Mitchell, a Greek American businessman from Cleveland who summers here, sees a world of difference. “There are people here who are extremely anti-American,” he said. “And there is no subtlety to their approach. It’s black or it’s white. Gray doesn’t exist.”Athanassopoulou, the foreign policy analyst, counters that most Greeks have at least one relative in the United States, and that many want their children to attend U.S. colleges. “You don’t send your child to be educated in a place that you have so many negative feelings about,” she said.